In the past, as means for developing a software product, the waterfall model, in which a development process is modeled and the progress of a work flows from the top process to the bottom process, was generally used
The waterfall model is based on a premise that when an upper process such as determination of specification is settled, a lower process is initiated. However, a production period of a target product or the productivity of software such as workers involved or the like, in each process, is planed based on manhours in each process.
A productivity estimation method will not be described in detail herein, but various productivity estimation methods have recently been suggested to estimate the productivity more accurately and exactly.
According to a related art, when the productivity in software development is estimated based on the scale of a software product and a necessary time for the software development, the number of source code lines, function points, the amount of document of the software product, or the like are used as a gauge of the scale. For this instance, the amount of necessary time for the development is determined based on the total number of engineers involved, working hours of each engineer, or the like. However, since this method measures the productivity applying the uniform same value to all the engineers without taking a difference in the level of ability among individual engineers into account, it is not be said to be an accurate method of estimating the productivity.
In an actual software development, it is very frequent that work in a lower process is initiated before settlement of the specification in a higher process and there are a number of products that become useless due to frequent modifications of the specification. For such a reason, it is difficult to estimate the productivity accurately.
Thus, as in Patent Document 1, a software development account-adjustment management system is provided capable of increasing a reliability by estimating productivity as precisely as possible, establishing the plan of software development, and performing feedback of a difference between a development status and an initial plan to data serving as a base of the plan, when the difference between the development status and the initial plan occurs.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-213880
According to Patent Document 1, since not only predetermined information but also information obtained through actual development can be updated, it is possible to repeatedly perform production management of software development and achieve an increased accuracy of the development plan.
In appraising the software development, modifications of the specification that occur during the development and works which are not included in a software product are taken into consideration, resulting in a further increase in accuracy of the development plan.